The University Channel collects video recordings of lectures on public and international affairs from many universities. The footage is minimally edited and available online for viewing, streaming and downloading.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Wilson School, said the University Channel creates a much-needed public platform for the serious discussion of critical issues. "I feel it is important to create a media outlet under the direction of academics where intelligent viewers can find the kind of analysis and dialogue that rarely gets aired on commercial media," she said.

Initial contributions to the University Channel include the recent Princeton University colloquium on "Rethinking the War on Terror"; a Harvard Law School conference on politics and the Internet called "Votes, Bits & Bytes"; and a talk on "Being Opinionated in America" from the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. New lectures will be added weekly.

University Channel lectures can be viewed as streaming video directly from the Web site and also are being offered to TV stations for re-broadcast. In the Princeton area, Patriot Media distributes University Channel material on its cable TV video-on-demand service. Some community access channels are picking up programs for re-broadcast in Princeton and other areas of the country, including Chicago and Cambridge, Mass.

Plans include distributing lectures through IPTV systems -- which provide interactive TV program services via the Internet -- being deployed on university campuses. Some lectures are available as audio downloads for iPods and computers. Subscribers to online media services such as RSS and Podcast also may access some of the content.

"The University Channel is taking advantage of digital flexibility to make important university lectures, panels and events as widely available to the public as possible," said Donna Liu, director of the University Channel. "We are creating a unique partnership of academics and broadcasting. A growing number of universities recognize the value of recording and archiving their important ideas and discussions on video, but have yet to find a suitable way to get this material beyond their campus walls and out to the public. The University Channel fills that need."